Balkans

A day and a half on the ferry from Barcelona to Civitavecchia, and after that there is still Italy to cross and another boat to wait for in Bari. We did that on the bikes, loaded, and only then did Albania begin. The ramp goes down in Durrës, and that is where we unloaded and turned inland.

Two of us, two bikes. I was on the Aprilia Tuareg. We were following the Trans Euro Trail through Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia, with a ferry in Split to take us home. We knew the countries we would enter and very little about the days in between.

Day 1: Durrës to the Drini i Zi

We came off the boat in Durrës and rode inland through Tirana until we reached the Drini i Zi, near Peshkopi. Crossing the capital was just the way in. After Tirana the first tracks start, and we took them as they came, a few hours of mountain road to get used to the country after two ferries and a ride across Italy.

We camped by the river.

Day 2: Peshkopi to Fushë-Lurë

We left the Drini i Zi and crossed Lura, trying to get through the park before the day ran out. The tracks in Lura are rocky, and the stones are large. The surface stays rock the whole way over, and it was very hot on top of that. We were well prepared, and it was still that kind of mountain.

On one of those tracks I started losing air in a tyre, a puncture or a leak, I was not sure which, and I kept riding on it until the bead came off the rim at the top. That is where I understood what I had. The only way off Lura was down.

The descent is the same rock as the climb. I took all of it with the tyre off the bead, on a bike that would barely steer, until we came out in Fushë-Lurë.

We slept at Bujtina Oxhaku i Doçit. The hotel was good and we ate well. From there we called the recovery company and asked them to come in the morning.

Day 3: Fushë-Lurë to Shkodër

The truck arrived around ten or eleven. We spent the rest of the day with Luli, the man from the recovery company, who took us from Fushë-Lurë across Albania until he put us down in Shkodër, almost at the Montenegrin border. It was not a riding day.

In Shkodër we looked for a workshop that could do a tyre and a rim, and we found Moto Servis Besa. Besa is the owner. He was quick. They took the bike in the late afternoon and we used the time to have dinner in the supermarket next door. The bike was back by about ten.

We crossed into Montenegro late, so the next morning could start on that side.

Day 4: Podgorica to Kapetanovo Lake

This was one of the better days of the trip.

We left Podgorica and crossed the Kuči mountains, Žijovo, in the south of Montenegro, until we reached Kolašin. The rock there is white and pale, and the tracks climb through it for a long time.

From Kolašin we kept going through the Morača mountains until we reached Kapetanovo Lake. The second half of that day is the one that stays. The track turns from rock to grass, and for kilometres it felt like we were surfing a green turf, the bikes just running over it, until the lake appeared with a handful of cabins on the water. There is no internet there. We slept in those cabins, unconnected, with the lake below.

Day 5: Kapetanovo Lake to Sarajevo

We woke in the cabins and left Kapetanovo Lake, crossing Durmitor until we reached the Bosnian border. The country through Durmitor is mountain and deep valley, and the views are the reason that crossing stays. The land drops away and we rode along the edge of it.

It started raining after we entered Bosnia, so we put the tracks away and rode for Sarajevo, to eat, to sleep, and to sit still after the last few days. We found a hotel with private parking for the bikes.

Day 6: Sarajevo to Prozor

We left Sarajevo, rode through Mostar, and stayed in Bosnia. The forest was the afternoon, not the whole day. After Mostar we crossed Blidinje until we reached Prozor and Lake Rama. The gravel there runs under trees, and that is where the woods finally take over.

We slept in a house we found on Booking and ate homemade pasta.

Day 7: Prozor to Ćukovi

We left Prozor and crossed two forests until we reached Ćukovi, still in Bosnia: one between Kupres and Glamoč, and the other between Glamoč and Bosansko Grahovo. The tracks are pale gravel under trees that close over the road, and they keep doing that for the whole day. It is a part of Bosnia we had not expected.

Day 8: Ćukovi to Knin

We left Ćukovi and crossed into Croatia. There is a short stretch of TET on that side, small enough that none of us wrote down which section it was, and then the trail runs out.

Instead of keeping north toward Slovenia we turned down toward Split, where the boat was, and a lot of what followed is tarmac, fast and open, the kind of road where the bike does most of the work. We stopped short of the coast at Knin.

Day 9: Knin to Split

A short day, and a hot one, thirty-five or thirty-seven degrees and most of it on tarmac. We rode out from Knin to a field of tanks left from the Yugoslav wars, then pointed the bikes at Split.

The ferry left that night for Italy.

The next morning we were back on the Italian coast. We crossed the peninsula on the bikes until we reached Civitavecchia, where another day and a half of ferry was waiting to take us home to Barcelona.

What I have kept from this one is the descent off Lura with the tyre off the bead, a whole day in a truck with Luli, and Kapetanovo Lake with no signal and a few cabins on the water. Bosnia I remember as forest. The last two days I remember as heat and road, ridden because the boat leaves at a fixed hour.

Next time I would not rush Albania. We did not ride it properly, and we spent the time we should have spent there on Croatia, which had less TET off-road than this trip was for. I would cut Croatia out and give those days back to Albania.